As we await information about the shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, we examine some fundamentals of the Sikh faith.
At this writing, little is known regarding the shooting yesterday at the Oak Creek Sikh Temple in which seven people died, including the shooter. We do know that police were called at about 10:15 AM.Upon arrival some police officers began immediately helping a wounded victim. At that point the officers were ambushed by the perpetrator, and one was shot multiple times. A second officer shot and killed the shooter. Of those killed, four were inside the temple; two, plus the shooter, were outside.…
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— go to most recent comments26 - STM
No, possibly not a good idea. Thanks to the link for Goodness Gracious Me.
Forgot all about that. What a classic show.
But will our Seppo friends understand that that show is about Indians taking the piss out of themselves as a transplanted ethnic group in British society, and all the cross-cultural confusion and hilarity that it creates??
27 - Dr Dreadful
@ #24: LOL. I thought about posting that sketch as well, Stan.
Perhaps a little bit of Bhangraman instead?
28 - STM
Lol. Classic. I have to depart Doctor, time to go to work. Cheers mate
29 - Igor
The PBS series "Imagemakers", which features short 15 minute dramas and comedies, has a video about a Sikh-American family driving their SUV through a remote area in the SW USA and having car trouble. There is drama as the young son begs his father to remove his turban so that a passing car will stop to give them aid instead of zipping past afraid of the 'terrorist' and his family.
30 - STM
Americans really have to get to know their turbans, Igor.
A tea-towel wrapped around your head, which was the favoured headgear of blokes like the late Osama bin Laden and many of his late or locked-up mates and is probably perfect if your address is a cave and you have no shampoo, are completely different to the turbans worn - almost with military crispness - by Sikh men.
You can usually tell by the rest of the kit, too. Sikh blokes are usually pretty well turned out sartorially and the older ones tend to wear suits, ties and very shiny shoes.
And they do love a nice cup of tea, too.
Decent and polite and respectful and tolerant folks, is how I've always found them.
Let's hope more Americans get to know them; I have a feeling they'd like them too.
31 - John Lake
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Country of the Saints from
A Study in Scarlet
"You mean.. Mommies a deader, too?"
One of the more moving passages in literature.
32 - STM
I realise this is probably the most inappropriate forum for these sketches, but I guess laughing is a good way of showing murderous racist idiots that theirs is a lost cause.
Another hilarious Goodness Gracious Me sketch from the BBC
33 - Igor
It's hard to find a group more undeserving of hatred by Americans than the Sikhs.
34 - Dr Dreadful
If Mel Brooks can make comedies about Jews being persecuted by the Nazis, then I'm sure there's room for a little British-Indian humour here.
I've probably posted this before, and it doesn't have any Sikhs in it this time, but this is my absolute favourite Goodness Gracious Me sketch.
35 - Zingzing
Doc, look up the "the inquisition" bit from history of the world pt 1, if you haven't seen it. I love Mel Brooks. American comedy has a lot of things to be proud of, but Brooks goes for that base level stuff, and he does it well. There's also the "hitler rap" music video, which is completely tasteless and all the better for it. Obviously, Brooks could do tasteful stuff if he wanted to (although that usually on a film studies level), but he usually went for the gut instead of the brain... What I like about British comedy is the cerebral qualities of it, the wordplay, the conceptual absurdity...
Mel Brooks gets by for me partially because I've been watching his stuff since I was 10 (a babysitter let my brother and I watch blazing saddles on one of the most informative nights of my life [she also uncovered my dad's meager porn collection]), but this goodness gracious me stuff isn't doing it for me. The social commentary I can see, but the presentation is rather obvious.
Some of my favorite shows of the moment is "the thick of it" and its film spin-off "in the loop," and the creator's American show "veep." have you seen any of those? "in the loop" is one of my favorite movies ever, and it is certainly the sharpest script (or improv) I've ever seen. Also Martin Mcdonagh's films and plays. That man is just funny, but he also has a lot to say.
I'm just looking for more shit up my alley, if you'll ignore the phrasing.
36 - STM
This one is MY favourite, and won awards in the UK as one of the top 10 comedy sketches of all time.
The scene: It's Friday night in Bombay. All the gang has been out getting tanked up on lassis, so what do you do, without fail, just like every other Friday?
A: Stop on the way home and grab yourselves "an English".
While there, mispronounce the waiter's name, act like a boor, order 24 plates of fries, 12 bread rolls - and order the blandest thing on the menu while causing as much drunken trouble as possible.
Watch as the tables are turned ...
37 - Dr Dreadful
LOL. Another classic, indeed.
I always used to go for a kebab, myself. Or, now that I've transplanted myself to California, a Mexican.
Wonder if there's a TV show in northern Cyprus about a bunch of lads and lasses in Larnaca who hit the chippy after a hard night at the hookah bar?
38 - Dr Dreadful
Before Goodness Gracious Me there was The Real McCoy, a sketch show that looked at immigrant life from a black perspective.
They had a character called Mr Frasier, who was God's gift to women (but only if the women in question were blind and deaf). Funnily enough, years after I emigrated there was a personal trainer at my gym who was the spitting image of Mr Frasier (minus the sticking plaster and with a slightly better hairdo).
Meera Syal, who went on to star in Goodness Gracious Me, can be spotted in a couple of the sketches.
39 - Dr Dreadful
zing: Haven't seen any of the shows you mention, but am a huge Mel Brooks fan, even his later stuff when he started to more or less rip off Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.
I seem to remember you had a stint of living in the UK, and wonder if you were there during the time when a show called Drop the Dead Donkey was a big hit?
DTDD was a topical, satirical sitcom set in a Murdoch-esque cable newsroom. What gave it its edge was that each episode was not recorded until the day before it aired, so that the writers could insert a generous helping of topical jokes into the script. Result: total hilarity to the point of bedlam. I bring it up because it seems like the sort of show that would have been right up your, ahem, alley.
40 - Zingzing
Doc, I lived in England 1999-2000, but we didn't really have tv. "in the loop" is on netflix instant, so if you've got it, watch it. Trust me. I'll search this donkey stuff. I can't tell you how much fun it is to introduce a political comedy fan on to "the thick of it" or " in the loop.". It doesn't matter if you watch the latter first.
41 - Dr Dreadful
zing, the problem with watching Drop the Dead Donkey now (and there doesn't seem to be a whole heck of a lot of it on YouTube) is that the satirical edge is gone.
Even when Channel 4 would re-run episodes a few months after the original airing, they had to insert a voiceover at the beginning explaining what had been in the news that week, otherwise nobody would get the topical jokes. 20+ years on, they're even more stale - although the characters are great and the interplay between them is still very funny.
42 - Dan
I congratulate the author for an informative article without resorting to the type of malignant anti-white smears subsequently engaged in by some of the more bigoted BC commentators.
We may never know whether the perpetrator 'mistook sikhs for muslims' or even if his targets were religous or race based at all. It could be that the victims were random, simply in "the wrong place at the wrong time". The latter seems to be a common conclusion when whites are the victims of non-white peoples.
To offer a slight balancing effect on sikh historic perspective, there is the 1985 bombing of Air India 182 that constitutes the largest mass murder in Canadian history. Canadian authorities determined the main suspect to be the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa. 329 souls were dispatched, 280 of them Canadian.
If those 280 hadn't had their voices taken from them it might be illuminating to ask them if they felt "enriched" by sikh diversity in Canada.
43 - Zingzing
No one but Dan can congratulate someone for not being racist, then go on a racist screed without the slightest awareness of his own hypocrisy.
44 - Dan
If the simple citation of a historic event becomes commonly refered to as a "racist screed" then racist screeds won't seem as offensive anymore.
45 - Zingzing
The third paragraph isn't racist, but the fourth is. And it's not really offensive anymore (at least from you), it's just numbingly sad.
46 - John Lake
Thanks for the nod, Dan. I'm not likely to stoop to anti-white bigotry, as I happen to be of the white race. Time may prove we are not as superior as we think.
47 - El Bicho
"We may never know whether the perpetrator 'mistook sikhs for muslims' or even if his targets were religous or race based at all."
Considering the guy was a white supremacist and talked about "racial holy war" with an old Army buddy, I think we have a good idea.
48 - Dr Dreadful
the type of malignant anti-white smears subsequently engaged in by some of the more bigoted BC commentators.
I think Dan must have been reading a different comments thread than the rest of us.
Either that, or his persecution complex has just had its spinach.
49 - Zingzing
By dan's standards, the races should be judged by the acts of a few, and I do believe the white race would have a bad time if that were true. A very bad time. He should hate all white people given his logic. But they're the saints without fault in his book.
Such a standard is stupid, ignorant, illogical, racist lunacy. And a waste of a life.
50 - STM
Lol. Dan comes out of the woodwork once again, with his "I'm only sticking up for whites hat on".
Yes, he's right: there are some lunatic fringes everywhere, including among the Sikhs. But there are others Dan might know more about ...
Example: Timothy McVeigh and his mates, or those nice militant right-wing Germans who killed 60,000 mostly white British civilians during their Blitz on Britain in WWII, in a war started by the aryan-supremacist believers of the master race theory.
Good job the Sikhs didn't buy into it and stuck with the Poms.
Quite a few Nazis who ended up face to face with Sikhs probably realised much too late and with their last breath that if love of nothing but strength and hatred of your fellow man were going to be the basis of an all conquering ideology, they might not have been part of the master race at all.
Thousand year Reichs only have the wow factor when they last longer than 12 years.
Dan's ideology of white is better rests where it belongs: in the dustbin of history, along with that of Adolf Hitler, Stalin and the Bolsheviks, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Pol Pot, Mao, Phillip of Spain and the inquisition, the Prussian and Japanese militarists, Europe's absolutist monarchs, and the rest of their ilk who thought one people could dominate another because they were in their own view far "better" suited to lord it over everyone else.
51 - Igor
Meanwhile, in a couple days we'll have the verdict in the Breivik case from Norway.
BBC
The trial of Anders Behring Breivik has ended in Norway with a walkout by families of victims in protest at his attempts to justify the massacre.
As he took the stand to explain why he had killed 77 people last July, some 30 people filed out of the courtroom.
Saying he had acted to stop a Muslim invasion, he asked to be considered sane and to be acquitted.
Judges will deliver their verdict on 24 August. The prosecution is asking for Breivik to be deemed insane.
Breivik's lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said his client had been driven by extreme politics.
“The mother of these actions is not violence, it is an extreme, radical, political attitude”
Breivik, 33, admits killing 77 people and injuring 242 on 22 July when he bombed government buildings in Oslo before shooting young Labour Party supporters at a camp on the island of Utoeya.
...
“It's not about his mental health - it's about us never seeing him on the street again”
The BBC's Lars Bevanger, who was in court, said the group felt there was no more that Breivik could add.
"He has a right to talk - we have no duty to listen," support group member Christian Bjelland said.
Taking the stand, Breivik spent 45 minutes going over his reasons for the attacks.
Reading from a prepared statement, he attacked everything he disliked about his country, ranging from non-ethnic Norwegian contestants being allowed to represent Norway at Eurovision to the effect of the TV series Sex And The City on public morals.
Citing statistics about Muslim birth rates, he said he had made his attacks to prevent Norway from becoming a "multicultural hell".
...
22 July 2011 attacks
Victims of the 22 July attacks in Norway
8 people killed and 209 injured by bomb in Oslo
69 people killed on Utoeya island, of them 34 aged between 14 and 17
33 injured on Utoeya
Nearly 900 people affected by attacks
"The mother of these actions is not violence, it is an extreme, radical, political attitude, and his actions must be perceived from the point of view of right-wing extremist culture," he said.
...
A mother who lost a child on Utoeya said all the focus on Breivik's mental health had been draining.
"It's not about his mental health," she told the court. "It's about us never seeing him on the street again."
YAHOO
For survivors such as Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, the most pressing need is to hear the verdict after a trial that went into every detail of Breivik's bomb attack in Oslo that killed eight, and his shooting dead on Utoeya island of 69 people, mostly teenagers.
"After Aug 24, we can be done with it," Gunaratnam told Reuters.
With what witnesses described as a "joyous battle cry", Breivik arrived at the island youth camp of the ruling Labour Party dressed as a policeman. He regarded his victims, the youngest of whom was 14, as brainwashed "cultural Marxists" whose support for Muslim immigration threatened Norwegian ethnic purity.
Gunaratnam, aged 24, escaped the massacre by jumping into icy lake waters and swimming for her life. She survived because Breivik was busy shooting her friends in the head at point blank range, presuming she would drown.
52 - Dan
"I'm not likely to stoop to anti-white bigotry, as I happen to be of the white race. Time may prove we are not as superior as we think."---John Lake
John, I hope you're not offended that I detect some unexamined assumptions in your reply. I've always welcomed thoughtful, reasoned, critique of my own presumptions and if nothing else, have used the experience to solidify my perspective. That is the spirit that I continue in.
First of all the word "superior" has some powerful emotional connotations inspired by a largely fictional prevailing narrative of victims and oppressors. It is also a clumsy word to describe the many varied racial traits that make up the whole of human bio-diversity. There aren't many traits that are universally accepted as "superior" even within races. So "superiority" is more often a matter of opinion.
One trait I consider superior-- in my opinion-- is the white race's ability to build and maintain successful civilizations. I think it is pretty clear by now that cities and institutions etc. reflect the genetic endowments of their creators. This is why, for instance, European societies are similar in structure with social safety nets, lower levels of corruption, and generally, an adherance to rule of law. Whereas Haiti reflects the types of societies found where Haitian peoples ancestors come from. You can also see the correlation in many once great American cities(Detroit etc) where the transfer of power to minorities, and the population shift to majority non-whites corresponds with the fiscal collapse, rates of crime, instability, and general unlivableness of the city. Sikhs and other non-white peoples emigrate to majority white populations for a reason. It is not the other way around. Is it because they find white societies superior to their own?
As an aside, I would call it a profound realization that, whether one is in favor of it or not, integration has always required governmental force to be achieved. Whenever whites are free to choose the schools their kids go to, the neighborhoods they live in, the organizations they belong to, they almost always choose segregation. Often at great personal sacrifice and expense. If diversity were truly a "strength" wouldn't people naturally seek it out? Some do, of course, but migration patterns show whites moving out when non-whites move in. Then the pattern is repeated after non-whites follow.
There is a trait that seems mostly confined to whites that I would consider them grossly inferior at, and it is a very important one from a Darwinian survival perspective. You could call it racial solidarity, or racial awareness. You earlier said that you were'nt likely to "stoop" to anti-white bigotry since you were "white yourself". In my view, white ethno-masochistic pathology is virtually the only threat to racial survival for whites.
Other races and mixed racial groupings don't suffer from this pathological defect. They clearly have a healthy regard for their race and are often unapologetic about it being a central feature. That's why, for instance, conservatives like Colin Powell support arch leftists like Barrack Obama. It is why college educated blacks across the country cheer the OJ Simpson verdict. Their racial solidarity trumps their aversion to seeing murderers go free.
Finally, you say "Time may prove we are not as superior as we think." Perhaps that is true and we are headed toward a utopia of sorts where racial preference and discrimination toward whites will no longer be needed to achieve "equality" however that is defined, but what if the opposite happens? Will whites be able to opt out to persue their own interests as a racial group? Or will they simply face genocide, as many white farmers in Rhodesia and now South Africa have?
53 - Glenn Contrarian
Dan -
Do yourself a favor and read - really READ - Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, wherein (if you've got not only the intellectual wherewithal but especially the humility required to show that yes, other people know better than you when it comes to why civilizations succeed or fail) that the success or failure of civilizations has absolutely SQUAT to do with race, but mostly to do with location.
Location, location, location.
And how about we discuss civilizations? Which civilization has had the longest period of peace in human history? Here's a clue - it wasn't a white one - it was the Japanese. And which civilization required written exams for civil servants as a requirement for employment 2000 years before Christ? Not a white one - it was the Chinese.
The Chinese were sending entire treasure fleets from the Kamchatka Peninsula all the way to the Middle East at a time when the Europeans were struggling to send single ships from Scandanavia to North Africa. The only reason the Chinese chose - CHOSE - to stop ranging the high seas with technology significantly beyond that of Europe was because of a lightning bolt that destroyed the palace of Emperor Zhu Di, which the people believed was a sign to stop being such an extroverted nation.
AND if you really want to discuss the superiority of civilizations, Dan, guess who taught the West that it was indeed okay to BATHE more than twice a lifetime? The Asians did...so if you really want to stay true to your white heritage, stop taking baths.
And I'd love to show you Singapore so that you can see how clean, how safe, and how modern a city can be, and much better so than ANY city in America...or have you walk down the streets of Shanghai where in the past 30 years they've built twice as many skyscrapers as New York City has ever had.
Dan, I used to be like you - I was racist but I still thought myself a nice, considerate person - but then I joined the Navy and saw the world, and found out that racist claptrap I'd been taught since my youth was exactly that - claptrap. It's long past time you saw past your own skin color, too.
54 - Igor
@52-Dan is wrong: most people have a natural curiosity and attraction to the exotic: tall people marry short, curly haired seek out straight haired, white seeks out dusky skin, etc. Statisticians call it "regression to the mean": phenomena tend back to average, or mean, characteristics.
It is governments that enforce segregation, witness the actions of Southern US governments both before and after the Civil War. A large part of that was to enforce political-economic strictures that would keep whites properous while their black slaves worked for no wages and lived in mean circumstances.
55 - Glenn Contrarian
Igor -
I have to strongly disagree with you that it is governments that enforce segregation, for the laws that those governments enforce almost always reflect the social mores of the population.
And while your mention of "regression to the mean" has some merit, in my experience, the more homogeneous the population (or the greater the level of social separation of different ethnic groups therein), the more prejudiced the population generally is against those who are different.
56 - Cindy
the laws that those governments enforce almost always reflect the social mores of the population
So, I guess women didn't want to vote and gays don't want to get married.
57 - Cindy
Could you please walk me through how law gets made so I can see how public opinion is used to make it almost always reflect the social mores?
58 - Cindy
Those who make laws must take a poll of the people, right? Or maybe they consult a psychic.
59 - Cindy
'the social mores of the population almost always reflect the laws that those governments enforce'
That makes much more sense. Must have been a puzzle.
60 - STM
Dan's wrong: The Sikhs haven't simply moved to Europe and the US (mainly to Britain) - they were moving around the old British Empire and later the Commonwealth for many decades. And not just in mainly anglo countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
They're to be found as native English speakers in good numbers in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, the West Indies, Fiji, and East Africa (notably what is now Uganda and Kenya, where they formed themselves from the late 1800s or so into hard-working and successful communities) and of course, South Africa.
And there they remain, except in situations where life had become so unpleasant they've moved again, either back to India or to another English-speaking country.
They have had a large community in Australia for over 100 years, on the east coast near Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.
Prior to that of course, it was the British who moved to THEIR country in large numbers during the colonisation of India.
The Brits are pretty good judges of character. Generally - and knowing their turbans, as they do - they have a good opinion of Sikhs. Sihks are highly valued members of the police and the military in many of those countries (although I can't see too many US police forces offering police-issue turbans ... yet).
As for Dan's mixing of blood: Sikhs assimilate, but they rarely intermarry. They keep to themselves on a social level; even 100 years later in Australia, it's unusual to be find Sihks marrying or even having relationships in any numbers outside their own communities.
BTW Dan, by your standards, America can't really be considered a "white race". As a genuine anglo of pure northern european background, I wouldn't consider any white American to be a pure white example of the so-called white race.
There has been far too much intermarrying and sexual intermingling of people from all over the world in the US for that to be the case.
Only genuine native-born anglo saxons, celts, norse, Germans etc - can lay claim to that.
Compare the number of people in England or Scandinavia with blue eyes compared to the numbers per head of the white population in America.
It's far too late already for those white americans fearful of such things; it's already bastardised. It's an immigrant society, and many of the immigrants have been southern European or hispanic or judaic, which of course have more than a sprinkling of North African and middle-eastern and Arabic blood.
That's especially true of hispanics and southern Europeans.
As an American white, it's quite likely people like Dan already have some "black blood", or at least non-anglo saxon or northern european blood.
Better get your DNA checked, Dan, just in case. That's the only way to be sure.
Mines good, but then I'm not worried about it.
Dan, do it for your own peace of mind; being that worried about it, we don't want any nasty surprises do we?
61 - STM
In 50 years, the US will be a totally mixed race society. "Pure" whites will only be able to exist in the US in gated communities that have strict rules on intermarriage.
Better get building guys if you want to keep that tainted love from taking hold!
62 - Zingzing
Cindy: "So, I guess women didn't want to vote and gays don't want to get married."
Women did want to vote, and it became more and more socially acceptable that they should have that right, so they got that right.
Gay people want to marry, and it's becoming more and more socially acceptable that they have that right as well, although on this one, the gov't is actually a step ahead of the social acceptability in some areas. In some areas, they reflect the continued bigotry of the people, to the benefit of no one and the detriment of people that some other people consider to be below them.
"'the social mores of the population almost always reflect the laws that those governments enforce'''
You should be able to see the pitfalls of this. In parts of Africa, newspapers call for the murder of known homosexuals. Should social mores always decide law? You'd be crazy to suggest so. People are fucked up sometimes.
63 - Dr Dreadful
As an aside, I would call it a profound realization that, whether one is in favor of it or not, integration has always required governmental force to be achieved.
Not really: only if your ruling class spends centuries impressing upon the populace that it's only right and proper that you and Mr Washington who sells newspapers on the street corner don't live in the same neighbourhoods and don't interact at all except in cases of practical necessity.
There were populations of African and Asian origin in Elizabethan London, for example, and complete integration (albeit on a small scale) up to and including intermarriage doesn't seem to have been a big deal at all. With the proviso that he or she ought to be a Christian first, it was taken as read that an immigrant had the same rights and responsibilities as a native. (Had Shakespeare lived 200 years later Othello, with its depiction of interracial marriage and a black man commanding a European army, would never have been written.)
64 - Dr Dreadful
Sihks are highly valued members of the police and the military in many of those countries
There was a bit of a kerfuffle about that, Stan, as I remember, when the first Sikhs applied to join the police in the UK, because of the religious requirement to wear the turban and because of the helmet being a standard and integral item of constabulary equipment. It may look silly, the reasoning went, but it serves a vital protective purpose and it won't fit over your turban. Sorry, lads, we'd love to have you in the force but it's safety we're talking about here.
At this point the Sikhs pointed out that somebody trying to clobber a bloke wearing several yards of intricately wrapped cloth on his head was likely to have about as much success as if the clobberee was wearing, let's say for the sake of argument, a police helmet.
Hence, as you say, Sikh officers have worn navy blue uniform turbans complete with chequered band ever since.
65 - Dr Dreadful
Those who make laws must take a poll of the people, right?
More typically they restrict themselves to a poll of those people whose opinions they want to hear.
66 - STM
Yes, quite right Doc.
The other thing is, if I were worried about keeping my "whiteness" as a blood heritage, there's no way I'd have a child with an American, even if they claimed to be of all-white background, because given the country's immigration history and the documented history of conjugal relations between whites and blacks and hispanics over the past 300 years or so, you just can't be sure of what's in the mix there.
I certainly wouldn't let my sister marry an American if I were worried about that.
On the plus side, reconnection of the loose wire between brain, mouth and ego would be good ... as would highly athletic coffee-coloured people (african physical superiority) who are far less hyper than they are now ("manana") and who eat more vegetable protein (beans) than those planet-destroying meat proteins (cows, pigs) - that could only be a bonus.
I used to think I wouldn't see it in my lifetime, but it's already happening right across the US, in every city and in every walk of life, as Dan points out, and of course given the numbers, it's all-consuming.
Americans of all persuasions - including those who believe in Dan's world view - must grasp this unchangeable truth or suffer the inevitable damage wrought in the process because of an inability to accept the inevitable.
67 - STM
Doc,
Sikhs have been serving in turbans in the Malay (now Malaysian), Singapore and Hong Kong police since the 1850s, and in the east African colonies (now Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya) they began serving as officers in the police in the 1890s.
So that's over 100 years of service in Britain's colonial police, and then later to the present day in those of the independent nations post colonisation.
Last time I was at Changi Airport in Singapore I saw Sikh police officers and customs officers and Gurkha special weapons police officers toting H&K sub-machineguns inside the airport. So there's two vestiges of empire still in existence in one former colony today.
Sikh police officers have been wearing turbans on the streets of London since 1950, when they were among those who began attending police courses for colonial police in the UK, which is also about the time they started to arrive in numbers in Britain.
I believe they were employed by the Met and other police services as civilian employees prior to the Home Secretary's ruling on turbans in the late 60s.
I certainly remember them in England in the 1960s while I was at school there, and was "taken into custody" by one when I lost my mother at the markets.
After making sure I was OK back at the police station, he went back out to look for her and eventually located her.
So my experience there has been good.
And yes, you are right - yards of tightly wound turban, especially the way the Sihks do it, is as good as a wooden top any day.
Probably better, even, as it might have a tiny bit of bounce on the bonce.
It shits me no end that these good people are being mistaken for "muslim terrorists" in the US by idiots who'd be even more dangerous if they had an extra half a brain cell.
68 - STM
The Gurkhas in uniform looked small and nuggety, BTW ... and flinty-eyed and confidently dangerous.
69 - troll
...like Igor's phenomena I suffer a regression to the mean when I read racial segregationist nonsense like Dan's considered opinions - and here I'm trying to turn over a be nice leaf...but it's hard to look away from intellectual train wrecks
short of banning human offspring altogether how about a government reinforced taboo surrounding intra-racial breeding?
70 - STM
Troll: "intra-racial breeding".
It's been quite successful among some secluded white communities in the Appalachians and other similar places that time forgot.
I did see a good show on TV a while back about white folks in the boondocks of Tennessee.
They weren't trailer trash.
You need a trailer for that.
I seriously couldn't understand a word they were saying. I wondered whether they could ...
Interesting though, especially given that some of them were white supremacists.
71 - Cindy
Women did want to vote, and it became more and more socially acceptable that they should have that right, so they got that right.
On what planet, zing?
Do you even see the irony in your acting as if women were outside society when your so-called "socially acceptable" (to whom? men? those with power?) ideas about women voting were in place.
And they didn't GET the vote, because people changed their minds. They fought to over turn the government rule.
Same with gay people. (forking invest in A People's History of the United States, would you for Pete's sake?)
"'the social mores of the population almost always reflect the laws that governments enforce'''
You should be able to see the pitfalls of this. In parts of Africa, newspapers call for the murder of known homosexuals. Should social mores always decide law? You'd be crazy to suggest so. (zing)
I did not say "should" reflect I said "do" reflect. zingzing, if i say eating fruit is good for you you can pull up a picture of a diabetic and justify that it is not. But allow me to express some examples where laws (and beliefs related to laws) are adopted by people because they (the people, not the laws) emerged (at birth) into a world, by which laws they are goverened:
The Law should be obeyed. (Who dare put herself above The Law?)
Voting is the way things should be done.
Private property is normal, natural, okay, a right.
Schools are the best way to educate people. Children should go to them.
We should follow the rules.
The police are necessary. (sometimes paired with...The police are there to help us.) (singing, ahem: the policeman is a person in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, he's in your neighborhood...
etc
My main argument with people is that they (we) have adopted the rules of this culture without challenging them. Other people in other cultures believe in stoning women to death. Why? Because it is "the law" (more complex than this, but close enough) in the culture they landed in! And they don't challenge their laws (or beliefs) any more than we do.
You don't REALLY think we are better or smarter or different than the people of any other different culture who do the same thing, do you?
Ask yourself this: Which came first, the zingzing or The Law. Then, tell me what influenced whom.
72 - Cindy
65 - That sounds about right to me, Dr.D.
73 - zingzing
cindy: "On what planet, zing?"
this one...
"And they didn't GET the vote, because people changed their minds. They fought to over turn the government rule."
you could say it that way. but the fact remains that someone up there in the gov't (all men, of course,) had to be convinced that that right was, in fact, a right. it became socially acceptable, or maybe inevitable, after many years of debate. i think you're (probably deliberately) missing my point if this is what you get out of what i had to say. because...
"I did not say "should" reflect I said "do" reflect."
ah, well that does make a difference. i thought you said "That makes much more sense" (in #59) in a "that's the way it would be in a perfect world" kind of way, but i see i was mistaken.
we're arguing the same point, methinks... laws don't and shouldn't always follow social mores, i say, and should challenge those who are wallowing in moldy bigotry, etc., but the people should also challenge bad laws. sometimes, the law is ahead of social mores, and sometimes, it lags behind. i believe from your last few paragraphs that you agree. but i wonder why you thought i disagreed... did you read what i wrote? i wonder if the froth got in your eyes before you got there.
"(forking invest in A People's History of the United States, would you for Pete's sake?)"
i've read it twice. the first time, i was completely enamored. the second, i was a little disturbed. it seemed nearly as bad as a right-winger cherry-picking history for bits that supported some huge overarching theory that wouldn't necessarily hold up everywhere in history. i don't think he's far off the truth, but i don't particularly like the way he presented it at times. and i don't like the way some on the left hold it up as some sort of holy text. i have conflicting feelings about it at any rate.
74 - Glenn Contrarian
Cindy -
So, I guess women didn't want to vote and gays don't want to get married. Could you please walk me through how law gets made so I can see how public opinion is used to make it almost always reflect the social mores?
Cindy, as Zing pointed out, in both cases it was only after they became socially acceptable to most of the people that such became law.
75 - Glenn Contrarian
And Cindy -
Then as now, women made up a slight majority of the population, and there were many (though not most) men who supported women's suffrage. I didn't say that most voters supported women's suffrage - I said that most of the population supported women's suffrage. This proves my point - unless you want to believe that most women of the time didn't want to be able to vote.